The first spam observation of 2009

It's been a week since I last posted, and I have noticed a trend in 2009 that continues on in the vain of 2008. I mentioned in my end of year round-up that viruses were on the rise in 2008. In 2009, I don't see much difference other than the mechanism of delivery - I'm seeing a whole bunch of e-card spam. So far this year, I've seen the following in my Junk Mail Folder:

Happy greetings e-card is waiting for you

E-Card from (Nancy|Susan)

Greeting you with heartiest wishes

You've got a Happy Greeting Card!

The links go to some variant of smartgreetingcard.com and look quasi-legitimate, except that most e-card mail is generally sent with much more complicated HTML, not simple plain-text messages.

These links, of course, are links to malware-infected pages where the spammer will try to infect your computer with a virus and flip you into a botnet. E-card spam is nothing new, we've seen it over and over again. Some things never change.